On the average how many games do your run on rPol? How many games do you participate in as a player? How many games do you lurk in?

I am currently running 2 games, playing in 9 and lurking in 1.

...and still I find myself wanting to either run or play in more. Is this normal or is this just me?

For the past year or so, most of my games (both running and playing) have been in a bit of a lull. I'm technically running five, but only one seems to still be active and I only say that because I think the quiet is from the holiday season. Out of the ones I still have, as many as four were running concurrently. I'm in seven games and a few discussion groups. Three of the games are properly active, another three are on hiatus, and one appears to be dead.

Since this is very few games for me, I've started looking for more to join. My RL friends tell me I'm crazy, but I'm gonna tell you your numbers are fine. :D

I'm running 3 and playing in 15.   It's actually the lowest number in five years.  :)

I'm currently GMing or Co-GMing 4 active games, playing in 3 active and 2 inactive games, and lurking in 6 others. (The lurking is unusually high just now because I'm mining a few games for ideas).

I also have a 'pipeline' of games I plan to run once the current ones come to an end.

With my current RL commitments, and my game design activities running in parallel, that's as much as (probably more than) I can handle.

But of course I want to play more. Hardly a day goes by when I don't think of a game I'd like to run, or see an ad for a game I'd like to join, or stumble across a concept I'd like to observe, and on each occasion I wish I had more spare time to devote to recreation rather than work.

It's perfectly normal. :)

I'm actually at a low point, where I'm only playing in five... but that feels good. I had been up over 16 at one point last year, and the quality control definitely went out the window, and things started to feel more like a chore than fun.

I like five. Five is good for me.

I own three dead games and Co-GM one live game. I'm playing in two active games. I'm lurking in three active games and three dead games. I have characters in five dead games. I go back and re-read the silent games every so often.

Playing 6 and running 3 plus one on hiatus.

I can really only run one at a time, but have played and/or co-GMed in up to 8 others at the same time before. At the moment, just running one and playing in one, both of them slow.
This message was last edited by the user at 03:07, Wed 28 Dec 2016.

I run one game, have ideas for one other campaign, its on the back burner until I can recruit five good players, I have created characters for five games as Player, one of which has stalled due to Holidays, one is limping along due to a number of factors.

My system of choice is, while having dedicated and highly skilled role players, is not widely used.

I have come to the realization, I can only run one campaign at a time.

I run one game...which was never my intention, but after three co-GMs utterly dropped the ball each time the GM needed to take time away from the game, I offered to take the job (I'd been part of the game from its inception).  The GM's been gone for a few years, but I promised I'd see it through to the end, so...I limp along as best I can.  *grin*

I'm in three games...one is very active and usually has multiple posts per day, one typically has multiple posts per week, and one is very casual and usually ends up updating once every other week.  There are two other games that I have characters in, but nothing has been posted in either of them in months, and there was another game I was in that ran in fits and starts, but it's actually run its course.

So, at one point, I was running one, playing in six...only rarely were they all active at the same time, but when they were, it was a LOT to stay on top of.  With the three I'm in now that are running, plus the one I run, I'm tempted to look for another game or two...but remembering how chaotic it was when they were all active at the same time keeps me from doing it.

How many is too many?  That's a personal thing...how much computer access do you have?  How much leisure time do you have?  How adept are you at juggling multiple lines of thought?  It's unlikely that any two people have identical answers to those questions, so there's not really a formula for it.  On top of that, different types of games require different levels of attention.  Three games that update once a week demand less focus than a single game that updates daily.  So, really, you're the only one who can decide whether you have too many games or room for one more.

Huh. Seems it's not just me. ^_^

Not enough. In one game now, but had a spell where I could only handle one game, intermittently. And That was not even close to enough.

I am in 0 games on here. I only follow the Community Chat and Game Systems boards. I tried participating in a few games, but none lasted very long.

Face-to-face, I started this semester with 5 games. At the moment, I have 1.5 games. (One game is de facto dead but we haven't pronounced it yet, so I'm counting it as half.) It'll probably pick up when the next semester starts though.

I'm running one game and that's all I can manage.  With six players, combat takes 30-60 minutes to adjudicate per combat round.  I'm also lurking in one game because I'm curious about the game system.  I'm not playing in anything on RPoL.

In addition to RPoL, I run a face to face game regularly (roughly every 2 weeks).

Well let's see... on here I'm in 10 games that are active, and another 4 that are on stand by, which may or may not come back.  IRL, I run one weekly game, and I play in 2 LARPs that meet monthly.

I'm currently running one game (and have no desire to run any more than that at once - I'm not exactly what you'd call "experienced" when it comes to GMing ;)), and technically playing in several, but most are basically dead, where there's been no posts for months so I removed them from my list. However, I am in two games that are still active and a third whose GM has had to take some time out but will hopefully be back some time early next year so we can restart (it didn't go anywhere before so we're gonna try again, I think - I'm certainly looking forward to having another go at playing the character I made for that one, anyway).
The GM for one of the active games is also a player in both my game and the other active game. A third person is a player in all three of those (my game only has two players) :D.

I have 6 that I am playing in, and I am gearing up to do a PathfinderGestalt version of Birthright.

Currently playing in just two games here, but that will probably be down to one soon (expecting my character to bite the bullet).

Playing in 9, at least that are still active (GM vanished from 2 or 3 others) and running 2.  Working on a 3rd to run, whenever I can find the time to finish writing it lol

Wow, I'm not surprised you're looking into an alternative system! That's way too labour intensive to be fun. I hope for a maximum of 1 minute per character per round.

Honestly, with the right system you can have 90% of the fun for 10% of the effort.

...And enjoy a lot more games in your available time.

Part of it is my fault.  I do all dice rolls.  I think it provides for a more immersive experience for the players and also avoids the hassle of players using the wrong modifiers and me having to wait for them to reroll.  It takes a lot of time to build a combat update since I need to roll for initiative (I do group initiative -- individual would just kill me), then go through each PC and monster in order jumping back and forth between the dice roller and the scratch pad.  It goes way, way faster in over the table play.
This message was last edited by the user at 22:09, Wed 28 Dec 2016.

I'm a player in four games, though one is on hold. I GM one game, and am looking at starting up a second.

I do so wish I could run tabletop games, and I did before, but I am constrained by physical distance since I moved.

I run two games, and play in two. One of the games I run has 50-60 players in it; hence why I'm not running eight games like I used to.

I run 5, play 9; some of those 9 though are either relatively slow-moving, or just relaunching after a hiatus. I run  a game IRL; but it always -has- to be DnD; and I never get to play. Even here, I only play in one 3.5 DnD; no Pathfinder or 5th which I'd like to; but get to play in a lot of systems I know there's no way I could ever convince my group here to play.

Playing in six ... one is finished, one IS dead (waiting for it to go away) and another might be dead before it started ... but who knows.

Running six ... three active and three (ON HOLD)

Running four, with another four in S-L-O-W development.

Technically playing in two, but since neither has had a GM post in more than a year...

Used to play in more, but they died.  But even back then I GMd more than I played.

I'm currently running 22 games, though some of them are very slow going, while others have multiple games within them (so that's another 12 games...).

I sort of play in 8; all but 1 of them are temporarily inactive.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:20, Fri 30 Dec 2016.

Currently I'm:

 - Playing in 2 games
 - Applying for another 4 more
 - And working on GMing a game in the next 4-6 weeks.

   (I've been out of gaming for just over 5 years, I'm trying to catch up)

I actually started another game, but merged the existing two games into one, so still running two. The games I play in actually went down since a couple of them folded.

Now I am wondering if I should run another game to fill in the void.

I run two games that are just now getting off the ground, and don't play in any yet.

I've gotten 1 game off the ground, am attempting to start a second one, and have ideas for a few more. I play in 4-6 (depending on how many of them are dead).

If you have physical dice, it goes much faster to just use those instead of the rpol roller. Since you're the GM, do you really need to keep track of what the rolls were?

Also, at least in offline games, I've found that players tend to stay more engaged if they roll their own dice. I guess it might not apply the same way to online games...

I have people use physical dice in my game, because I'd rather use actual dice than an automated roller (no computer-controlled RNG is truly random, after all). I think I get more satisfaction out of using real dice, too, and I trust my players to be honest :). After all, if we were at tabletop I wouldn't constantly be trying to lean forward and see what they rolled - I would expect them to just apply any bonuses and penalties and just give me the total (and let me know if they critted/botched).
That said, since I run combat via people giving me rough instructions via PM and then me typing out a single post with everyone's actions for the round, I do perform all those rolls myself. But that's just because combat would take ages otherwise. At least I only have two players to worry about :D.

Running 4, playing in 2, about to be playing in 3.

Playing in 12 active, 5 semi-active. Too much time on my hands. Finally dropped all my games with a GM-who-shall-remain-nameless.

Playing in 1 slow, but active game, 2 games I am just waiting for the current players to find my PC so I can join their teams, 2 games that seem to be on indefinite hiatus, and finally 1 game I will be DMing soon. I'm still working with two of my players to finish up their character sheets. Luckily, I know everyone in RL, so it's easy enough to prod them along:)

I'm in Ron's four.  I run another one on another website (very slow), and have a character sitting in one that has been quiet for a looooong time.

I used to be in a dozen at a time, but life came along.  ^_^
This message was last edited by the user at 18:27, Tue 14 Feb 2017.

That's what you think...  Muwahahahahahahaaaa!!!!

...I'm in Ron's five.

I'm currently running 4, about to start a 5th. I play in 3 and in one of those I have 6 characters.

running one I got off the ground (my first!), playing in a slow one. unless you count the tales community, then im in another rp over there.

In reply to Raffles (msg # 40):

Eh?  I don't have five games.

Then I'm in your four currently active ones.  ^_^  Unless a character is about to get themselves dead, in which case...well...

Last I looked, I'm playing in four games...applying to a couple more, and looking to GM one in a few weeks. And I've only been here like 2 - 3 weeks or so.

Wish I'd known about something like this earlier.

In reply to KingHenryBlack (msg # 45):

Watch you don't get yourself overloaded!  It can be hard to tell how much time and effort a game will take till you play it a bit, but GMing definitely takes more, at least if you are going to do a decent job.

In reply to Brianna (msg # 46):

I believe that I can handle 4-5 games - most of them post 2 or 3 times a week, so keeping up isn't a problem.

With the GMing part, I know the system like the back of my hand, only troubles have been trying to figure out what RPol is all about. Once I have that down, things *should* go smoothly.

Thanks for the advice, much obliged.

:)

In reply to KingHenryBlack (msg # 47):

If you've never played by post before, you may still be crowding yourself.  But have fun!

Too damn many, spread across 3 sites.

I have started to multi task. I've actually posted to RPOL while waiting for my combat turn in my IRL game.

Just 1 active game on here. I have 8 off-site (2 group games, 6 solos). Those are playing in and not GMing, although I was co-GMing one of them (a Firefly game).

In reply to KingHenryBlack (msg # 47):

Most of the time, I could actually handle more games than I do now.  In a normal week, there's only one game I'm in where I'm not generally waiting for someone to post.  However...I've learned the hard way that sometimes, all my games will have flurries of activity at the same time...and it's also usually during a stretch of time where RL demands on my time mean I've got lee-than-usual amounts of time to post.

'How many is too many' can only be answered by the individual player...but it doesn't hurt to ask yourself, If all these games go really active at the same time, can I keep up?  If you can't give an unequivocal 'yes' response to that, you may want to look at jusy how you've committed yourself.  And if can answer yes, more power to you.  *grin*

facemaker329:

In reply to KingHenryBlack (msg # 47):

Most of the time, I could actually handle more games than I do now.  In a normal week, there's only one game I'm in where I'm not generally waiting for someone to post.  However...I've learned the hard way that sometimes, all my games will have flurries of activity at the same time...and it's also usually during a stretch of time where RL demands on my time mean I've got lee-than-usual amounts of time to post.

'How many is too many' can only be answered by the individual player...but it doesn't hurt to ask yourself, If all these games go really active at the same time, can I keep up?  If you can't give an unequivocal 'yes' response to that, you may want to look at just how you've committed yourself.  And if can answer yes, more power to you.  *grin*

An interesting point - thankfully the 4 games I'm in haven't had terribly much in the way of posting 'frenzy' at the moment. (Suppose that's a blessing  for the moment) I'm usually on 2-3 times a day, so I can nip any particular sprouts in the bud.  If it all goes haywire, I'll have to prioritise, to be sure. Thankfully, most games give you a couple of days to read over things and comment. I *should* be fine, but I guess I'll know when the 'rubber hits the road."

I'm also specifically holding back on the Game I want to run to see if just such a thing happens, and how I can handle it before committing to running anything.  "Be prepared" is more than a Boy Scout motto for me.